DCEmu Homebrew Emulation & Theme Park News
wraggster
by Published on April 17th, 2007 02:44
via ign
This summer, Eidos will unleash Escape from Bug Island, a US localized version of a little-played Japanese game by the name Necro-Nesia. In this quirky B-movie style action adventure, players wield the Wii remote and nunchuk to explore this creepy island and stomp and whack enormous bugs that get in the way.
Eidos knows that it's got a pretty campy story to work with in Escape from Bug Island, so it's cranking up the kitch level to over-the-top levels and letting the action speak more than the characters. The original game's introduction's been reworked with English voice over work, but once in the game the dialogue's toned down to simply text cutscenes. In all, Escape from Bug Island has about five minutes of spoken dialogue, and Eidos freely admits that the voice over work isn't going to win any dramatic awards. It's meant to be that way.
After the game introduces the three characters and gives the player a hand in a training mission where the Wii action controls are learned, the story begins: at its most basic, your weapon-happy buddy and your girlfriend go missing. Where'd they go? That's for you to find out. Escape from Bug Island has a bit of inspiration from Silent Hill and Resident Evil, but only in the sense that the game's creepy, moody, and hopes to squick you the heck out with horrifying images of bugs grown to abnormal proportions. There's an adventure focus where you'll have to explore the island and its specific locations, as well as find objects that will give clues to your next point on the map, but in all honesty this games all about squishing bugs. Tiny bugs that swarm all over you, huge bugs that tower more than twice your height...and everything in between.
Escape from Bug Island uses the Nunchuk/Wii Remote pairing, with players maneuvering their on-screen persona using the analog stick. To attack, players hold down the B trigger on the Remote and whip it. In our early playtest, we could create light and powerful combos by whipping the remote in a sort of rhythm, with the last hit either whipped normal or hard depending on if we wanted to add a little "oomph." Pushing back on the analog stick will attack low, forward on the stick will attack high. To roll out of the way waggle the Nunchuk for a left evade, waggle the Remote without the B button for a right evade. Players can hop into a through-the-eyes first-person view by holding the A button on the Wii Remote, and look around using the controller's pointing function. This ability comes in handy when you're trying to whack at bugs up close with your stick, or when you want to throw a rock at a specific target. Incidentally, if you "throw" the remote with a whipping motion while in this first-person mode, it'll toss a held item.
The original Necro-Nesia game has been altered to improve the gameplay experience. The Wii motion controls have been tightened up, and elements such as secondary objectives have been added to give players more reward in swatting bugs. Unless you've played the Japanese game you won't even know that these elements have been added, but their inclusion definitely beefs up the production with more stuff to do and a more intuitive way of doing them. If anything, our early playtest didn't turn us off -- the game does have its quirks but it's still pretty fun.
Escape from Bug Island supports the Wii system's widescreen mode and includes support for progressive scan through component cables. The game doesn't look all that bad for Wii standards, pulling off a smooth framerate even when the environments fill with dozens of bugs or gargantuan insects that loom overhead. ...by Published on April 17th, 2007 02:42
via ign
Your stranglehold on brain-training games is over, Nintendo DS. Midway is about to start getting PSP users' gray matter in tip-top shape with Hot Brain: Fire Up Your Mind, a title packing five categories of mind-bending brainteasers.
Midway brought Hot Brain -- set for a June release -- into the IGN offices last week and put my mind through the paces in exercises testing logic, memory, math, language and concentration. I ordered numbers from highest to lowest, picked out misspelled words and matched images.
It might sound easy, but the key to Hot Brain is getting as many correct answers as you can in a limited timeframe. See, Professor Warmer -- voiced by Idle Hands star and Christopher Guest-favorite Fred Willard -- is running an institute in the game that studies the result of critical thinking on brain temperature. He says that when you're crunching an equation or word problem, more blood's flowing to your noggin and your mush mound is getting warmer.
That's hot.Each timed exam calculates your brain temperature based on how many problems you solve in a specific time period and how many times you screw up. You can practice the 15 exams all you want -- earning "calories" that unlock the game's three difficulties -- and try for the day's best score in Test mode. The mode grabs one exam from each category, calculates your overall brain temperature, records your daily high and plots it on a colorful chart to track the rise and fall of your brain functions.
Even if you stick with one difficulty in the practice mode, the puzzles are going to get tougher. As you get better, you'll get deeper and deeper into the levels and the challenges will ask more and more of you -- even my beloved "Musical Memory."
A member of the memory category, Musical Memory harkens back to the glory days of Simon and features four images that are each assigned a PSP button and sound. At the onset of the puzzle, the game runs through a sequence -- a duck quacks, a bird chirps, the duck quacks again -- and you have to duplicate it. The game was great at first, but the better I got, the longer the sequences got. Where I was once ordering motorcycle engines and helicopter whirls with ease, I was left to whimper as I tried to figure out if the seventh sound in the Professor Warmer series was Fred Willard groaning or laughing.
Of course, at least Musical Memory ramps up to being tough. "Back-Seat Driver" just made feel like an idiot from the get go.
Uh, is it brawn?The final test in the Logic category -- which features non-threatening, guard-lowering challenges such as creating shapes -- Back-Seat Driver shows users a sequence of arrows and then has them look at a top-down, grid map of a city. The player has to apply the arrows to a taxi's route and decipher where the cab will stop. Even on easy, it kicked my ass, and I ended the exam with an "Icy" brain temperature of 32 degrees.
Whenever you think you've honed your skills to a point that won't make you look like a fool in front or your friends, you can gather a group and take on two ad-hoc multiplayer modes. "Brain Race" pits two to four players in a competition to see who can get his or her brain "On Fire" first, while "Think Tank" has two to four team members working toward getting their collective brain "On Fire."
Although it was still using placeholder graphics in a few spots, the build we saw of Hot Brain was all but completed last week, played well and even allowed you to skip the Fred Willard excerpts if you wanted. It isn't a sure thing yet, but if you've been waiting for a brain-stimulating title on your PSP, Hot Brain might have your number this summer. ...by Published on April 17th, 2007 02:37
News from gp2xstore
The M3 Simply and R4DS are now only $39.99 and the new Supercard DS One is now only $44.99! Order now and have your order shipped out next day!...by Published on April 17th, 2007 02:37
News from gp2xstore
The M3 Simply and R4DS are now only $39.99 and the new Supercard DS One is now only $44.99! Order now and have your order shipped out next day!...by Published on April 17th, 2007 02:37
News from gp2xstore
The M3 Simply and R4DS are now only $39.99 and the new Supercard DS One is now only $44.99! Order now and have your order shipped out next day!...by Published on April 17th, 2007 02:31
New GBA Homebrew release from Anders Hansson
I would like to make our GBA game The Old Well available for your readers. It's fully playable but was intended as a demo to attract publishers It is a quite clever puzzle/platform game that was originally inspired by the obscure Vic 20 game Bricks. The finished game was meant to have enemies of different behaviour but it still works as a game without them. Kind of like a reverse Mr. Driller.
It can be downloaded from www.athleticdesign.se/theoldwell. Instructions are inside the game. Dan Johansson programmed the game. Anders Hansson designed the game and made the graphics.
The demo was finished in 2004. With no interests from publishers, we began working on a PC-version instead, which unfortunately also was abandoned later. However, it was partly included as a level of my recently released PC-game Lighthouse Lunacy (www.lighthouselunacy.com) ...by Published on April 17th, 2007 02:31
New GBA Homebrew release from Anders Hansson
I would like to make our GBA game The Old Well available for your readers. It's fully playable but was intended as a demo to attract publishers It is a quite clever puzzle/platform game that was originally inspired by the obscure Vic 20 game Bricks. The finished game was meant to have enemies of different behaviour but it still works as a game without them. Kind of like a reverse Mr. Driller.
It can be downloaded from www.athleticdesign.se/theoldwell. Instructions are inside the game. Dan Johansson programmed the game. Anders Hansson designed the game and made the graphics.
The demo was finished in 2004. With no interests from publishers, we began working on a PC-version instead, which unfortunately also was abandoned later. However, it was partly included as a level of my recently released PC-game Lighthouse Lunacy (www.lighthouselunacy.com) ...by Published on April 17th, 2007 02:24
via megapotion
Famitsu brings us the top 20 most wanted games as voted by its readers.
01. (PS3, Square Enix) Final Fantasy XIII
02. (NDS, Square Enix) Dragon Quest IX
03. (PS3, Capcom) Biohazard 5
04. (PS3, Konami) Metal Gear Solid 4
05. (PS2, Atlus) Persona 3: Fes
06. (NDS, Capcom) Gyakuten Saiban 4
07. (PS3, Capcom) Monster Hunter 3
08. (NDS, Nintendo) The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass
09. (PS2, Banpresto) Super Robot Taisen: Original Generations
10. (Wii, Square Enix) Dragon Quest Swords: The Masked Queen and the Tower of Mirrors
11. (PS3, SCEJ) Minna no Golf 5
12. (PS2, Atlus) Odin Sphere
13. (Wii, Nintendo) Super Smash Bros. Brawl (PSP, Square Enix) Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII
14. (Xbox 360, Microsoft) Lost Odyssey
15. (Wii, Nintendo) Doubutsu no Mori
16. (NDS, Square Enix) Final Fantasy XII Revenant Wings
17. (PS3, Capcom) Devil May Cry 4
18. (PS2, Sega) Shining Wind
19. (PSP, Square Enix) Final Fantasy Tactics: The Lion War
20. (PS2, Square Enix) Final Fantasy Versus XIII
Quite a lot of movement in this week’s most wanted charts. The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass continues its slow ascent, as does Dragon Quest Swords: The Masked Queen and the Tower of Mirrors, while both Minna no Golf 5 for PlayStation 3 and Doubutsu no Mori for Wii make a big jump from number 16 to 11 and number 19 to 15 respectively. ...by Published on April 17th, 2007 02:12
via kotaku
Yep, despite the fact that he's a known liar, infamous for threatening fellow attorneys and judges and is on the cusp of (one would hope) losing his license to practice law in Florida, Jack Thompson managed to weasel his way onto Fox News to spew his own particular brand of hate and lies.
That's right, Thompson is trying to link the worst shooting in U.S. history, the one that occurred earlier today at Virginia Tech, to video games.
What I love about this is that just about everything he says on live television is blatantly not true, like blaming video games on the Red Lake High School shooting.
It saddens me that filth like Jack can get on national television to gloat and revel in the deaths of so many and try to put it off as education.
More on the the terrible shootings over at http://blog.dcemu.co.uk ...by Published on April 17th, 2007 02:06
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